Hi Danny,
Welcome to your personalized Grit Lab Report!
We will go week by week, reviewing everything you have told us through Poll Everywhere.
We hope this will help you reflect on what you have learned and experienced during Grit Lab.
Important note!
Sometimes, you may not have been able to respond to all polls.
If the data for one of the polls is missing, the automatic report will display NA, or ““.
Okay, let’s get started!
The first half of Grit Lab delves deep intp the passion facet of Grit.
We like to call it Choose Easy, because we think gritty people pursue what they enjoy.
Putting it graphically, gritty people tend to pursue the intersection of these four circles.
The first time we met, you told us where you were on the grit rubric.
Regarding passion you picked Stage 4: I have an interest I’m actively pursuing, voluntarily devoting more than 3 hours of “free time” each week .
Regarding perseverance you picked .
As you know, grit grows, so don’t worry if you are not yet where you’d like to be in your grit journey.
Hopefully, this class will help you become grittier each day.
In week 2, we looked at your interests.
Interest is an emotion, and it is the opposite of boredom.
Your interests are the activities or subjects that spontaneously grab your attention.
Trying things out and seeing how you feel is the best way to refine your interests.
In week 3, we studied values, your beliefs about what is important.
You said your top three values were tradition, benevolence, and universalism.
You wrote a “This I Believe” essay, and here’s where you located it on Schwartz’s value taxonomy.
When we talked about strengths in week 4, you said your personality strength was agreeableness.
You said your top three talents were spiritual, kinesthetic, and social.
We then talked about goal hierarchies.
You said you felt totally clear about your top-level goal.
We discussed self-concordance, or how much a goal aligns to your deeply held values and beliefs.
A goal you said you will be pursuing for the next six months is to writing up organized notes from rabbi itamar’s torah classes .
Here is how self-concordant that goal was:
Don’t worry if your self-concordance for that particular goal is low.
It might mean that you need to reframe that goal in a way that makes it more relevant to your deep self, or change it!
Remember that self-concordance is goal specific, so other goals might be more self-concordant.
We then transitioned to the second part of Grit Lab:
Work Smart
In week 6, we looked at goal setting and planning.
You WOOPed!
For your Wish, what you wanted to accomplish, you said .
For your Outcome, what would happen if your wish came true, you said .
For you Obstacle, what it is within you that stands in your way, you said .
For your Plan, you created this when-then plan to achieve your goal: .
Whether you changed your WOOP or stuck to that one, here’s where it landed between being a total fail, and going exactly according to plan.
And here’s how much you learned
These goals are hard, and despite our best efforts, our plans can fail.
The important thing is that you learn something along the way!
In week 7, we talked about deliberate practice.
You shared you’ve done daily practice in Basketball .
We learned that deliberate practice requires a challenging, hyperspecific goal, maximum concentration, instant feedback, and is often done alone.
In week 8, we discussed feedback.
Even though feedback can be hard to take, it is often the key to improve. So if you want to improve, seek it actively!
You said you felt Excited when receiving critical feedback, and Excited when receiving positive feedback.
We then turned to learning about stress.
In week 9, you reported feeling a moderate amount of stress in your life right now, the primary source of it being decisions .
We also talked about adversity and failure.
Although related, adversity and failure are different:
Adversity happens to us, whereas failure is something for which we are generally more responsible.
However, how we interpret stress and failure matters…
Interestingly, research has found that people who believe that stress can facilitate learning and growth experience enhanced performance, well-being, and health.
And failure—not achieving a particular goal—can be interpreted as “I’m learning!” and lead you to look for the lesson in that experience.
We closed the Work Smart section of the class by talking about habits.
Throughout the semester, you practice habit building using your Build-A-Habit Guide book.
You describe the habit you chose as Health .
Whether you were successful in habit building or not, this is how much you learned.
Finally, what good is grit if we do not dream for others?
So, we transitioned to Paying it Forward.
In week 10, we looked at mentors: role models that take an active role in your growth.
Hopefully, your mentor was authoritative, being both supportive and demanding.
Here’s how you described them:
You also wrote a gratitude letter to Other .
In one word, you said it made you feel Thankful .
One way of paying it forward is having a prosocial, beyond-the-self purpose. Here’s how you responded to items assessing that.
… and so quickly we arrived at the end of the semester.
Here’s how your mood varied over these weeks.
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Do you notice any patterns? Is there anything that correlates with your mood?
Here you can scroll through all the quotes you wrote to summarize each class.
| |
| Passion and perseverance for a long term goal |
| Your eyes dilate when you're interested |
| Your choices for A B and C careers give hints to where you'll end up. |
| Goal fusion makes the tedious tasks easier |
| Deliberate practice is key |
| The compliment doesn't need a kaboos |
| Don't seek it stress stick to your values and just try to achieve your goals |
| Night me screws morning me |
| You learn a lot vicariously |
In the final class, we looked back to everything we’ve learned together and to how our passion and perseverance evolved during this class.
Here are the comments from your Grit Lab Teammates:
| |
| Jaron Choe |
| Dear Danny,
I'm grateful to have been placed in your group. You are a very sincere, kind-hearted man who has been a wonderful teammate. I love how much enthusiasm and joy you have in sharing about your life, your faith and the things you enjoy, it's really inspiring. In the modern day in youth culture, sometimes it feels like being negative is a cool thing. But your positivity, humor and kindness show me how wonderful these traits are to have in a person.
I loved your discovery project was at the root of discovering really what you want to do with her life. To become a rabbi and be so proud and open to pursuing this goal is so inspiring. The adventure you've placed yourself on, exploring new places, meeting new people and learning constantly and sharing it with those who will listen is a dedication to not just a job, not just a career, but a calling. I may not be jewish, but I find great value with you as a person that shares about a faith which everyone can learn a lot from. I am glad God put you on this Earth. Thanks for the semester Danny! |
| Nathan Xu |
| Danny, it has been a pleasure sitting next to and working with you throughout the semester. Your passion for Torah study and spiritual self-improvement is admirable and inspirational. It is clear that you employ ‘grit’ in your daily life, and I wish to emulate your dedication and conscientiousness. Moreover, your warm and welcoming presence significantly enhances our team atmosphere. The way you greet the team with a genuine smile and share updates from your week creates a positive and uplifting environment. Your ability to seamlessly integrate your personal experiences into our collaborative space contributes to a sense of camaraderie and connection among team members.
I extremely appreciated your Discovery project presentation about ‘Pursuing the Rabbinate’, and I especially enjoyed learning about the ‘Divrei Danny’ group chat where you spread weekly Torah insights. This demonstrates the value of interpersonal accountability that we learnt in class, but also clearly showcases your leadership, resilience, and intellectual discernment. |
| Rebecca Kim |
| Danny's friendly and warm demeanor was apparent since the first day we met. I remember him introducing himself as a sophomore who, to my knowledge, had this unparalleled passion for his Jewish studies, and I was inspired by his fire for the subject. The lengths he goes to flesh out this deep-rooted interest is quite extraordinary, and he is always so willing to share his insights with the team, which I deeply appreciate. I have learned so much about Jewish beliefs and values, and about just life in general through Danny’s experiences and perspective. Danny also has just an extremely radiant personality, looking through the positive lens of life when possible. He has encouraged me during hectic and stressful times throughout the semester, and I only hope to have adopted some of his piercing kindness by now. Danny is a prime example of what grit and kindness looks like, and I am so grateful to have met him.
In Danny’s Discovery Project, I learned more about what Danny has been up to this semester on his journey exploring the Rabbinate. He was able to accomplish so much in such a limited amount of time, which is amazing. I got to hear about his enlightening experience taking a class on the Talmud, reading through the Torah, sending original short weekly lessons on the Torah to his family and friends, having a curiosity conversation with a Rabbi, and interning as a Rabbi in California. Even just by listing all the things he’s done for this Discovery Project, I can perceive the intense passion he has for Rabbinism and his religion. I learned that there is a lot that goes into the calling of a Rabbi. One must be knowledgeable about so much text, and they are responsible for understanding this and teaching it to others. I admire Danny being so outspoken about his faith, and I appreciate him wanting to share his experiences with our team each week as well. I hope Danny continues to pursue this interest because it is so clear that he loves investigating it. |
We hope you have emerged from Grit Lab a little grittier than you started.
Do you want to see how your grit rubric changed?
Drumroll please…
Don’t worry if the rubric doesn’t yet reflect growth. It is only a coarse measure that cannot replace your own self-reflection.
In any case, grit is not built in a day…
…remember that progress is never smooth…
…so stay passionate and persevering in the lifelong quest of choosing easy, working smart, and paying it forward.
With grit and gratitude,
Angela and the Grit Lab team.